Mitt Romney claims that his tax cuts will stimulate the economy and pay off the deficit.
If history is any guide, this won’t be true.
Ronald Reagan cut taxes in the 1980s. For a time, the economy improved and the government gained more revenue. Congress spent that money and expanded the deficit.
George W. Bush cut taxes in the early 2000s. For a time, the economy improved (after 9/11) and the government gained more revenue. Congress spent that money and expanded the deficit.
It was a Democratic Congress under Reagan (in the U.S. House), and a Republican Congress under Bush.
Does anyone seriously think that under Romney, economic benefits from tax cuts will be used to pay off anything? Medicare and Social Security alone make this impossible.
Don’t get me wrong. Cutting taxes is a good thing, and it will yield economic benefits if ever done. But economic reasons are not the real reason to cut taxes. The real reason to cut taxes is ‘ it’s not the government’s money.
We keep hearing about ‘class warfare.’ But there are no classes in a free society. The only classes in a free society, if you want to call them ‘classes,’ are the productive and the unproductive.
In a welfare state society, such as ours, the unproductive live off the productive. Those who do not, will not or cannot work live off those who make an unusually large amount of money. Those who cannot or will not produce rely instead on subsidies, favors or outright wealth transfers from the government. There is corporate welfare and traditional welfare. It’s all the same, in principle.
The fiction is spread that those who make a lot of money are fortunate and lucky. Nonsense! While it’s true that great efforts don’t always lead to lots of money, anyone who makes lots of money obviously put a lot of effort into doing so. You don’t become a millionaire or billionaire by sitting and doing nothing. This isn’t luck or ‘good fortune.’ Yet the unchallenged assumption prevails. The unchallenged assumption is that those who make more money owe something to those who make less.
This is not an assumption that Obama challenges. On the contrary, Obama is the poster child for the assumption that those who do better are merely lucky, and therefore must share. However, I don’t see Mitt Romney or any of the others challenging this assumption either.
I would love to see a politician or a leader with the courage to come out and say, ‘It’s not the government’s money. He who earns it, owns it.” And there’s no threat to society by upholding the right of private property, either. A blindfolded person who earned a billion dollars will do better with that money (either spending or investing) than all the politicians in Washington DC put together. Does anyone seriously think that Barack Obama, the prince of the socialist welfare state, would ever have made a billion dollars on his own, not in politics but in the free market of business? Or even a million for that matter? While there are plenty of worthwhile, talented and competent people who won’t earn a million or billion dollars in their lifetimes, Obama and his cohorts running the sinking Big Government ship in Washington (with rare exception) are not among them. By and large, they’re the least morally and practically qualified to do anything. Why do you think they keep disappointing voters in a big way?
Visitors from another planet would marvel at America in 2012. They would ask, ‘Why are these people looking to the least capable and least successful to revive their once robust economy? Why don’t they restore business and capitalism to their prior places, since that brought them all their success in the first place?’
And I’m not talking about having a former businessman run the government like you would run a business. This cannot be done! Any businessman worth his economic weight should know that government operates by pull, manipulation, theft and deceit. Business, by definition, works by persuasion, excellence and delivering the best possible product or service. Business must work and perform to survive, while government must only acquire more power and wield more threats, to survive. Business and government could not be more different. Any businessman turned politician who claims, ‘I can run government like a business’ is a fool, or worse.
Government leaders should cut taxes, flatten taxes and limit the power of government to what the Constitution originally stated. They should do this because it’s the right thing to do. People write me and claim, “There’s nothing I can do.” Not true. You can demand that your politicians do this. Demand it over, and over and over.
Free enterprise and capitalism — the opposite of all things Obama — are the right things economically because they are the right thing, morally. Nothing less will save America, and these are the things that can save America.